Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article linked is much more nuanced than just 'private tutoring will be made illegal'
[flagged]
The least nuanced thing here may be your worldview.
The life of a private tutor (2020)
41–50 of 93 posts
Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)
#42Every student's case mentioned made it seem like the goal of tutoring is for the student to acquire elite status and prestige by going to highly selective schools through the planning by their neurotic parents. The material learned was less relevant. I want to teach my students how to follow their passions, how to strive for the life they want, rather than for hollow symbols of success. It seems like hollow symbols o…
I attended an "elite" boys school back in the 1990s. It was a doctor and lawyer factory. Everyone went to university and most got advanced degrees. But I talked to a teacher there recently. The students are now so wealthy that they are hard to motivate. Doctors have to touch sick people. Lawyers have to go work in an office. The students at my old school today don't dream of success. They all pass, they all do well,…
although genuine, this analysis is sort of 2D cutout characterization, which feeds class stereotypes in another way.. "When I was in school, I had to walk 2 miles every day, uphill both ways! .. you people are less motivated" sort of applies
Modern life has the number of human signals daily, increased to stratospheric levels.. this is new, very new. It is not clear how intelligent, social people are changing under this communications environment.
other points omitted for the sake of brevity, but not the whole story here..
Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I attended an "elite" boys school back in the 1990s. It was a doctor and lawyer factory. Everyone went to university and most got advanced degrees. But I talked to a teacher there recently. The students are now so wealthy that they are hard to motivate. Doctors have to touch sick people. Lawyers have to go work in an office. The students at my old school today don't dream of success. They all pass, they all do well,…
although genuine, this analysis is sort of 2D cutout characterization, which feeds class stereotypes in another way.. "When I was in school, I had to walk 2 miles every day, uphill both ways! .. you people are less motivated" sort of applies Modern life has the number of human signals daily, increased to stratospheric levels.. this is new, very new. It is not clear how intelligent, social people are changing under th…
Perhaps bank accounts, transactions, credit reports, grades, should be public information, physical measurements, medical history, etc should be public information.
That way we, we do not have to play these signaling games and can focus resources elsewhere.
Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)
#44Bloom's 2-Sigma Problem: students getting one-on-one instruction perform 2 standard deviations better than those learning from ordinary instruction methods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem
Yes! The thing that was missing in the original article was answering the most important question in all of this: Does Tutoring Work? The implication left for a reader of the original article is that tutoring is mostly about exam-prep or that it is under-regulated, ineffectual, and a folly of the rich. But the truth is that the over-regulation of conventional time-based classroom learning is deeply flawed based on ou…
> we need people to teach as part of how they learn.
I've got a principle I came up with called LTD: Learn, Teach, Do.
The idea is to prioritize activities where I can be doing all three at the same time. An example would be pair programming with a junior on a new problem where I don't know how to solve every part of the problem. "Learn on the job together with a team, and share learnings as you go" is basically the kind of work that I mean. I've found LTD activities are awesome in so many ways. You build up the team around you, grow as an individual, and get shit done all at the same time.
I'm increasingly against activities which focus strongly on only one of these(school being the main example).
Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
The least nuanced thing here may be your worldview.
Please don't cross into personal attack, no matter how bad another comment is or you feel it is. It only makes things worse.
Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
The least nuanced thing here may be your worldview.
Please don't cross into personal attack, no matter how bad another comment is or you feel it is. It only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Right. I should've thought about that comment for a moment longer.
Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)
#47I picked this up from my time watching those British period pieces, so this might be an assumption based on a fictional telling of the past, but hasn't this concept of being a private teacher/tutor been around for hundreds of years?
As these shows always showed the aristocracy, the aspiring hero/heroin had their private teachers "guiding them to greatness".
I also found it cynical that instead of aspiring to get a PhD to earn a mediocre salary(in comparison) at FANNG, one could navigate the field of being the private tutor to the already-rich and probably earn more.
Random person: "What do you do for a living that has made you so wealthy?"
Elite Hong Kong tutor: "I tutor 12 year olds privately on mathematics."
Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
So true but this youngster doesn't sound like someone who needs to win, he is already made. All he (or his parents) want is to look like they are successful by saying, "Little Johnny got 15 GCSEs".
As a new parent I'm really torn on this topic. On the one hand building resiliency and self-motivation need to happen through self-directed activities. On the other hand, Sitting on a couch watching Netflix probably isn't the most efficient way to build these skills.
I found that heavy amounts of discussion of the "why" for any activity, and then instilling confidence in that person that they're capable of doing the thing that they've already agreed to the "why" for, is a necessary prerequisite for their self directed activities to be productive ones.
The problem with most kids and adults I know is they either lack a depth of reasoning for why they ought to be doing something better, or lack the confidence that they'd be able to accomplish it if they put their mind to it.
If you can't come up with a convincing "why" for them, then you should reflect on how sustainable forcing them to do that thing will be once they have independence.
There were a lot of things my mom expected of me (similar to these kids with tutors). Some of them I agreed with, some of them I didn't.
When I finally got my independence at 18, guess which ones stuck, and which ones (where a lot of time and effort was put into cultivating them) evaporated?
Talk to your children deeply about the why, and, as the saying goes, they'll suffer almost any how.
Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)
#49I picked this up from my time watching those British period pieces, so this might be an assumption based on a fictional telling of the past, but hasn't this concept of being a private teacher/tutor been around for hundreds of years? As these shows always showed the aristocracy, the aspiring hero/heroin had their private teachers "guiding them to greatness". I also found it cynical that instead of aspiring to get a Ph…
>instead of aspiring to get a PhD to earn a mediocre salary(in comparison) at FANNG
As a PhD at FAANG[1], I mourn that the default aspiration for getting a PhD isn't staying in academia and advancing science.
And if you call FAANG salaries mediocre, I don't even know what you'd call academia salaries :(
-------
[1] Formerly. Left for greener and less soul-draining pastures.
Re: The life of a private tutor (2020)
#50Bloom's 2-Sigma Problem: students getting one-on-one instruction perform 2 standard deviations better than those learning from ordinary instruction methods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem
Yes! The thing that was missing in the original article was answering the most important question in all of this: Does Tutoring Work? The implication left for a reader of the original article is that tutoring is mostly about exam-prep or that it is under-regulated, ineffectual, and a folly of the rich. But the truth is that the over-regulation of conventional time-based classroom learning is deeply flawed based on ou…
>Throwing thirty teenagers in a room at 8am and having a tenured adult speak at them for 45 minutes on a subject is not a recipe for success
The problem here is that getting enough money to hire more teachers per student is like pulling teeth. The problem that we as a society are solving isn't "how can we achieve the best overall educational outcome?" It's "how can we avoid a disastrously uneducated population with a budget of $X?" I'm not entirely sure we're doing a good job on that one either, though.